At about 3:20 into the video Maher begins recounting similarities between the Jesus and stories in other ancient religions, notably Horus who was born of a virgin, baptized, crucified, resurrected, etc.

But then there's this video...

...which appears to refute Maher. I'm uncertain but it looks like Maher got it wrong.

Another video with AronRa seems to claim that most of the Old Testament was written about 500 BCE.

But that appears to be inconsistent with this Nova program.

Now you can't fight bullshit with more bullshit. Has anyone done any fact checking with regards to Maher's and AronRa's claims?

Humans arrived on Earth on 22 October 4004 B.C. A few of us are still trying to repair the ship.

Speaking as someone who's a fan of Egyptian mytholgy, Horus was a sun god that had a army of followers, the only myth featuring him dying was one where it happened as a kid. His mother (Isis) was given a magic spell from Thoth (the deified Imhotep) to revive him. He wasn't crucified, instead was stung to death by scorpions.
Later he fought Set, who had killed his father. Set removed one of Horus' eyes, though it was replaced by Thoth. This replaced eye was weaker, and became the moon. Seth lost one of his balls before escaping, and this is why the desert is so infertile.
In the lead up to the fight Horus gained a army of followers and retinue, not just 12 apostles. His feast day was in August, not December. (Though for the record, neither was Jesus, if we go by the New Testament we don't get any actual tie, but it would seem to be around spring. December 25th was a later adoption from pagan religion.)

As for the story of his conception, the main account is that Seth killed Osiris, cutting his body into several pieces and cast them away. Isis was able to gather them and restore life to Osiris, except for his penis which was eaten by a fish. So Isis fashioned a new phallus for him out of gold, and thus conceived Horus with Osiris before Osiris returned to the Underworld, becoming the God of the Underworld.

Really, Osiris has more in common with Jesus than Horus does.

Now, I do want to add that I'm not a Egyptologist, and with the Egyptian religion having lasted over thousands of years it had a lot of varieties in beliefs over that time.
Still, it seems Maher gets this from the crappy Zeitgeist film, which itself came from the works of Archaya S. While she's popular with the Christ mythicists, she's otherwise a fringe writer.
That's not to say there isn't a lot of borrowing from other religions going on in the Bible, but it gets difficult to tell how much is straight out borrowing and how much is trope, and how much is from cultural themes.

I did a quick glance of wikipedia, and it cites a date of around 500 BC, though the source is a book published in '98. It might be there's been more recent findings that have changed that date.
But in the Nova video, they're not talking about the entire Old Testament, they are talking about origins of the stories that make up the Old Testament. That's a bit different.
The stories themselves were compiled into the Torah are older than the books involved, true, but the stories and what we call the Old Testament weren't written down and compiled until much later, after any real events the stories were based on were pretty much lost as the stories were changed with the telling.

(16-06-2013 03:00 AM)KeenIdiot Wrote: Speaking as someone who's a fan of Egyptian mytholgy, Horus was a sun god that had a army of followers, the only myth featuring him dying was one where it happened as a kid. His mother (Isis) was given a magic spell from Thoth (the deified Imhotep) to revive him. He wasn't crucified, instead was stung to death by scorpions.
Later he fought Set, who had killed his father. Set removed one of Horus' eyes, though it was replaced by Thoth. This replaced eye was weaker, and became the moon. Seth lost one of his balls before escaping, and this is why the desert is so infertile.
In the lead up to the fight Horus gained a army of followers and retinue, not just 12 apostles. His feast day was in August, not December. (Though for the record, neither was Jesus, if we go by the New Testament we don't get any actual tie, but it would seem to be around spring. December 25th was a later adoption from pagan religion.)

As for the story of his conception, the main account is that Seth killed Osiris, cutting his body into several pieces and cast them away. Isis was able to gather them and restore life to Osiris, except for his penis which was eaten by a fish. So Isis fashioned a new phallus for him out of gold, and thus conceived Horus with Osiris before Osiris returned to the Underworld, becoming the God of the Underworld.

Really, Osiris has more in common with Jesus than Horus does.

Now, I do want to add that I'm not a Egyptologist, and with the Egyptian religion having lasted over thousands of years it had a lot of varieties in beliefs over that time.
Still, it seems Maher gets this from the crappy Zeitgeist film, which itself came from the works of Archaya S. While she's popular with the Christ mythicists, she's otherwise a fringe writer.
That's not to say there isn't a lot of borrowing from other religions going on in the Bible, but it gets difficult to tell how much is straight out borrowing and how much is trope, and how much is from cultural themes.

I did a quick glance of wikipedia, and it cites a date of around 500 BC, though the source is a book published in '98. It might be there's been more recent findings that have changed that date.
But in the Nova video, they're not talking about the entire Old Testament, they are talking about origins of the stories that make up the Old Testament. That's a bit different.
The stories themselves were compiled into the Torah are older than the books involved, true, but the stories and what we call the Old Testament weren't written down and compiled until much later, after any real events the stories were based on were pretty much lost as the stories were changed with the telling.

The Nova program doesn't actually disagree with AronRa.

I'm not familiar with Egyptian mythology, but Zeitgeist took a lot of liberty with the Christ story, bending facts of other religions. This was picked up by The God Who Wasn't There and Religuous as well as the "pop-Christ mythicists." It would be an incredible check mate to the Christ story, but apparently not a lot of fact checking went into it.

That said, there are some parallels with other gods. You mentioned Osiris as one. Mithras is another and probably the clearest parallel I'm aware of: baptism in sacrificed bull's blood, resurrection, etc.

I'm glad someone thought to open this thread. The misinformation in those films has been bugging me and I'm interested in what ammunition Bucky and Fulton will bring to the table.

It was just a fucking apple man, we're sorry okay? Please stop the madness
~Izel

Yea - I'm going with Mithras as the source of the Jesus character. The Romans at the time called this worship the Mysteries of the Persians. This religion was practiced from about the 1st to 4th centuries AD so, the biblical timeframe reported for the Jesus stuff pretty well lines up.

***
The Romans were pretty much baffled by the Egyptians ... they pretty much confused the Greeks, as well. To me, Horus was never a match for the Jesus character; Horus was the sky.

I'm kind of into Egyptian stuff, as well. I like reading about the Pharaohs and the connection with their particular gods but mainly, I like studying the architectural structures. The archeological sites of towns are quite revealing and they are always digging out more and more stuff.

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. ~ Albert Einstein